In a recent report earlier today (via MacRumors) Apple was in talks with a Bay Area Firm for improving its mapping and navigation services. Later, an Apple Spokesperson officially confirmed to New York Times that they had bought Coherent Navigation for an undisclosed sum.
Coherent Navigation, founded in 2008 specializes in High Integrity GPS systems. These systems, also called as iGPS, combine signals from the traditional mid-earth orbit GPS satellites with those from the low-earth satellites of voice and data provider Iridium to offer greater accuracy and precision, higher signal integrity, and greater jam resistance.
A number of Coherent's key employees recently began working for Apple, including tech veteran and CEOPaul Legoin January and co-founders William Bencze andBrett Ledvina as of last month according to sources. The website has been taken down and MacRumors reports that the name servers now point to that of Apple's.
Apple has acquired a dozen navigation focussed firm over the last few months in an attempt to bolster its mapping and navigation services that debuted with Apple Maps with iOS 6. Even after 3 years, Apple Maps are far from perfect great and Apple needs to offer something new to keep its user base away from Google!